


fight or flight

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Alternate Universe - Magic, Animagus, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24115549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Run,the fox is saying, but the warning is quiet, aborted.Run? Fightorflightorfight?Guan Shan stares until the panther gathers himself to his feet and stretches. His skin shudders with the motion, muscles bunching and unravelling. His tail flicks once, twice. Another incline—backwards, towards the fields, an open court. And then they play.[Request: 19 Days Harry Potter/Animagus AU]
Relationships: He Tian/Mo Guanshan (19 Days), Jian Yi/Zhan Zhengxi (19 Days)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 323





	fight or flight

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much to Chris **[@kaminari3112](http://kaminari3112.tumblr.com)** for requesting this fic! Such a delight to revisit this AU. I relied heavily on the fanon-created school on the Harry Potter Fanon Wiki - Fenghuang School of Witchcraft and Wizardry set in Beijing. I definitely recommend [checking this out prior to reading](https://harrypotterfanon.fandom.com/wiki/Fenghuang_School_of_Witchcraft_and_Wizardry_\(Logo8th\)), especially for information relating to house names! Huge thank you to Vivian **[@lemonysharkbait](http://lemonysharkbait.tumblr.com)** for kindly proofreading this fic. 
> 
> **If you would like to have a fic written for you, please visit my[Tumblr](http://agapaic.tumblr.com) to see how!**   
> 

The dust storms come in spring, thick clouds of dirt and gravel whipped off the surface of the Mongolian plains and scattered like ashes across the landscape of Beijing. The sky turns the orange of an overripe peach, a thick wasteland of peeping spires and blinking signal lights that are barely visible from the peak of the Badaling Mountain—and only if one tries to look. Up here, the air is warm, a little dry, thick with pollen carried across on the wave of a blessedly cool breeze, and at night, the air chills Mo Guan Shan beneath the layers of his school robes. Still, there is sweat on his upper lip and at the sparse hairs on his temples, and panic prickles on the back of his neck.

The school is not a warm place: its grounds consist of a network of pagodas connected by walkways. They’re sheltered by a grove of purple clematis which, enchanted, bloom year-round and provide a thick barricade against snow and rain, but not the cold. Plumes of cloud gather at the feet of students and teachers alike, and Guan Shan finds no solace tonight in the walk from the library to the main pagoda, where the Qilin dormitory is waiting for him. His bed, his warm sheets, a window shut out against the early spring chill. 

Lanterns float along the walkways; at night, they branch off in red strips of light like a tree set softly aflame. They’re not light enough for Guan Shan to see his feet, moving fast along the walkway to the main pagoda—not light enough for him to remove the hand he keeps gripped around the wand in his pocket. Just a precaution. 

A good question to ask: why would a student need to keep their wand and wits about them while walking through the grounds of a protected educational institution, albeit at night? Granted, there’s the docile Fireball whose wings Guan Shan can hear beating through the windowpanes of his shared dormitory, the billowing flames it lets loose routinely from its perch atop the main pavilion, perpetually charred. There’s the Xiangliu, too, its body and nine serpentine heads kept barred in its cave for some three-and-a-half thousand years. 

But those fears are futile; the creatures are a necessary risk for a decent education at Fenghuang. Instead, Guan Shan fears this: the disfigured darkness. The loping streak of black that keeps to his side while he walks. If he looks, just at the corner of his eye, it stays there, a breathless mass of shadow that makes no sound. 

It watches him. It waits for him to stop.

When he looks next, it’s gone. 

The walkways criss-cross over patches of dark fields and darker waters, weave through orchards of cherry blossoms and apple trees and begonias. Lantern-light glints off the surfaces of small ponds and streams, off the slowly blooming petals of tulips and chrysanthemums. He sees only the beginnings of spring awaiting daylight. Whatever else slips between the trees and around the outskirts of the ponds, close enough for Guan Shan to touch, it doesn’t let itself be seen.

‘I’m not fuckin’ scared of you!’ Guan Shan shouts out, footsteps quickening along the boardwalk. A hundred metres left, maybe less. Briefly, he considers stopping in the awning of the pagoda of the Potions classrooms. Another thought: _If you stop, you’re dead._ He calls again, eyes veering wildly:‘I’m not fuckin’ afraid!’

‘Someone else might beg to differ.’

Guan Shan skids to a stop. One hand on his wand, the other clutching at his chest. His robes tremble above the fierce beating of his heart. He squints into the darkness, breathes out shakily. He sees the glint of a Prefect badge before anything else, recognises the voice before that. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, carrying the proprietary _mien_ of a Pureblood. 

‘He Tian,’ he mutters. Slowly, he lowers his wand. Somewhere, an owl hoots, and then: silence.

The moon is a thin thread in the sky, the white curve of a thumb nail. It barely illuminates the twist of He Tian’s smirk, but Guan Shan knows it’s there. ‘A little late for a midnight stroll, isn’t it?’

‘I was in the library.’ _Not that it’s any of your fucking business._ Guan Shan’s heartbeat has started to slow; he hates that the panic abates at the sight of someone like He Tian. A thought strikes him: in almost seven years, he’s never seen He Tian alone. 

There’s a small, quizzical line marking itself between He Tian’s brows, and he moves forward until his face is fully illuminated by the light of the lanterns, awash with red paper; sharp features exposed to discoloured light, the whites of his eyes pinkish, his teeth blood red. 

‘I saw the scoreboards this morning,’ He Tian says. ‘Close to last, weren’t you?’ 

‘You know I was fuckin’ last,’ Guan Shan spits. ‘And you know you were first.’

‘Hm, well. Studying still isn’t an excuse, Mo Guan Shan,’ he says in a wry voice. ‘The rules are the rules.’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. He notes, acidly, that He Tian is still holding his wand. ‘There’s the rules,’ Guan Shan says, ‘and there’s what’s done.’ He jerks his chin. ‘Figured you’d know all about that. Me and last year’s Qilin prefects had an arrangement.’

‘An arrangement, hm?’ He Tian asks. He seems genuinely interested. ‘What were the terms?’

‘You let me study late; I don’t lose my scholarship.’

After a moment, He Tian narrows his eyes. ‘What’s the catch?’

Guan Shan hesitates. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘It works entirely in your favour. What do I get out of it?’

Guan Shan opens his mouth. Closes it. He shakes his head; the corners of his mouth turn downward. Sometimes, he remembers that She Li is not a creature made up of uniquely cruel personality traits: he belongs to an entire group of them. He Tian smiles more prettily, beguiles their teachers and the rest of the students with a distracting charm, but he’s never been the exception. 

‘You’re a Xiangliu,’ Guan Shan mutters eventually. He folds his arms against the cold; it isn’t the shadow, but it’s caught up with him just as quickly. ‘You wouldn’t fuckin’ get it.’

‘And you’re a Qilin,’ He Tian murmurs. ‘Where there doesn’t have to be sense.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You callin’ me _stupid?_ ‘Cause I’m not from some fancy fuckin’ Pureblood family?’

He Tian takes another step. He’s at an advantage: taller, stronger. His wand is still out. Guan Shan was done for twenty metres back. If he runs, where will he go?

‘An arrangement,’ He Tian says, ignoring Guan Shan’s demands. ‘We could make our own, Little Mo. The kind where I let you run about at night without bringing up the work you’re doing for She Li. Although maybe you should be doing less work for him and more for yourself.’

Guan Shan rears back. ‘I dunno know what the fuck you’re—’

‘Or an alternative,’ He Tian cuts in, holding up a hand. His eyes are glittering; this close, Guan Shan can feel the warmth of him through his robes. ‘I take your word for it. You… _study—_ and I let you be on your way.’

For a moment, Guan Shan thinks he’s misheard him, but there’s no chance of it. At night, the grounds are silent. There are no closing or opening doors, no thudding footsteps of professors or students moving about to breakfast or class or Quidditch practice. At night, there is only the hum of cicadas in summer, the frozen silence in winter, and the hushed unthawing of the grounds in spring. Tonight, nature unfolds itself too quietly to be heard.

Guan Shan asks eventually: ‘What’s in it for you?’

He Tian laughs. The sound is soft, and startling. (Guan Shan will realise, much later, that in seven years he’s never heard it sound quite like that before.)

‘Now you understand,’ He Tian says afterwards, still amused. And then, with a shrug: ‘Nothing. Something. Who knows, Little Mo.’

‘Don’t call me that—like we’re friends.’

He Tian, ignoring the remark, reaches out. He pats Guan Shan on the shoulder with his free hand. (Guan Shan will realise, much later, that in seven years it’s the first time either of them have ever touched.) ‘Off to bed,’ He Tian says. ‘Scholarship kids need their sleep, too.’

 _So do Prefects,_ Guan Shan almost says, and then thinks better of it. He says instead, ‘You should be careful. There’s… things wanderin’ about.’

He Tian’s lips twitch at the corners, a distracting gesture. ‘Oh?’ he asks. ‘Like what?’

Guan Shan pulls a face. This isn’t open disdain, but he knows when he’s being mocked. Regardless, he says, ‘I dunno. Just—watch your back.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ He Tian says. He points a finger. ‘Don’t forget to watch yours.’

***

‘You made the drop?’

‘Always do.’

‘Forgive me if I don’t trust you well enough not to ask.’

‘None taken,’ Guan Shan mutters. The inside of the cave is bitter with cold, the damp air cloying on the back of his throat. A foreign breeze comes from inside its shadowed depths, and there’s a skitter of small claws on slick rock. Guan Shan doesn’t look up. Sparking light from the end of his wand, he’d see the suspended bodies of a bat colony, swaying slightly. An invisible wall blocks the rest of the cave from trespassers, a shimmering barrage that Guan Shan has only once before tried to put a hand through, and regretted it—there’d been the strange sensation of a limb lost and kept there for some time. 

She Li stares into the darkness. Somewhere, settled miles-deep within the belly of the cavern, lies the Xiangliu. She Li’s yellowish eyes peer in with an intent that suggests he’s looking straight at it, into each set of eyes of its nine heads. Maybe he is. Guan Shan has stopped wondering; they meet past midnight, and Guan Shan is always dragged down with tiredness, shadows beneath his eyes, a woollen ache in his own skull that will thud painfully the next morning. The Xiangliu seems like the least of his worries.

Back in the dormitory, a thick, blue-coloured potion rolls in the bottom drawer of his bedside table. He’ll take a swig before his first class in the morning, wait for the crisp clarity to develop like settling on a pair of glasses after a lifetime of blurred vision. The crash will come later, but he’ll deal with that then. It’s a familiar routine. A wheel he can’t stop riding. He Tian had hit the mark too closely: he’s ruining himself for She Li, teetering along the precipice of expulsion, and either She Li gives him a break, or Guan Shan—falls. 

He knows, with nauseating aptitude, which is likely to happen first.

Eventually, She Li looks away from the cavern’s darkness, and faces Guan Shan with his back to the cave. ‘Did you have any problems?’ he asks.

Guan Shan nearly lies, but he knows where that’s gotten him before. He says instead, ‘Does He Tian know what I do for you?’

‘You mean, do I have a little gathering each night in the dormitory and tell the other Xiangliu boys of my affairs?’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

She Li looks at him steadily. ‘Why are you asking about He Tian?’

‘He was on Prefect duty tonight.’ Guan Shan grimaces. ‘He saw me comin’ back. Told him I’d been studyin’ in the library.’

‘He bought it?’

‘Maybe. Seemed to know I do stuff for you. Does he?’

Another glance into the cavern. Is there some movement Guan Shan can’t hear? The slither of its body against the rock? He hates it here. The dampness weighs on him, as if he’s been caught in a storm and is still standing in his clothes, dripping wet and soaking him brittle to the bone. She Li has been meeting him here since they were boys, since Guan Shan was too small to fill his hand-me-down uniform that had thumb holes in the cuffs of the woollen jumpers. Years on, taller, broader, Guan Shan hates it all the same. 

‘Are you warning me or looking out for yourself, Mo Guan Shan?’ She Li asks him quietly. 

Guan Shan bites the inside of his cheek. There’s a lump there already, routinely swollen and sore. He says, ‘I just wanna know if he knows everythin’. That I’m not registered—’

‘You don’t need to worry about someone like He Tian.’

‘His family—’

‘I know exactly who his family is. What it is.’ Guan Shan silenced, She Li’s lips press into a smile; it isn’t anything like He Tian’s, with the false promise of warmth and charm. Maybe that’s better—Guan Shan feels no sense of conflict staring into the face of its wearer, who now says, ‘He might seem frightening, but there are barriers in place for people like him. The kinds of walls you can’t see.’ Behind him, the veil of darkness appears to shimmer, like a glint of light catching on spilled oil, and She Li continues: ‘Don’t worry about He Tian. Worry about doing the job.’ He flicks his fingers, dismissive. ‘Now skitter along—and don’t get caught.’

***

‘You look tired,’ Jian Yi tells him the next morning during Defence. Jian Yi points a finger at him, dangerously close to the soft, fleshy underside of Guan Shan’s eyes, where dark bags have grown larger overnight. Guan Shan smacks his hand away, and Jian Yi makes a wounded sound.

‘Keep insultin’ me and I’ll make sure it hurts,’ Guan Shan growls. 

‘You wouldn’t dare,’ Jian Yi throws back, keeping his voice low.

‘Why? ‘Cause you're the principal’s kid?’

Jian Yi snorts. ‘Nah,’ he says quietly. ‘Because you’re a Qilin. It’s against our better nature.’

Guan Shan rolls his eyes, ignores him. In the middle of the pagoda, Laoshi He is delivering an even-toned lecture on the nonverbal resistance of the Imperius. He doesn’t pace the floor, stands, instead, in complete stillness with his feet braced and his gaze sweeping routinely across the Seventh-Year students sitting cross-legged on the floor. 

Guan Shan’s feet have started to go numb; his head droops. The potion’s vitality effect is already wearing thin, one gulp stripping a thin layer of skin from the back of his throat, the sting of it finally abating too. The label on the potion bottle reads, in a half-legible scrawl: _Use sparingly. All good things come with a price._

Guan Shan suspects he uses it more than ‘sparingly’, and knows the price too well.

‘Late one again?’ Jian Yi asks, voice lowered even further, probing. ‘When are you gonna stop? My father’s already got your name on a list…’

Guan Shan squints upwards. Outside, it’s a bright day: placid, a little balmy, the mountain air crisp . Within the Defence pagoda, only a little of the light washes down through the disc-shaped window settled in the ceiling, a bright circular beam that settles directly at Laoshi He’s feet, just veering off the toes of his glossed dress shoes--no more. 

Guan Shan tilts his head slightly, angled in Jian Yi’s direction. ‘It’s April,’ he says. ‘I’ve got ‘til July, after our NEWTS, and then I’m out. I’m done.’

‘And does She Li know that?’

Guan Shan glances at Jian Yi, then at She Li, who is sitting on the floor on the other side of the room, silver head dull and tarnished in the shadows. ‘He’s gotta.’

Jian Yi shifts, swallows. ‘I heard,’ he murmurs, leaning in, ‘that he likes to play with his food for as long as possible until it’s done. Exhausted. Crawls away and just… dies. Like a dog.’

‘Yeah, well. Good thing I’m not a fuckin’ dog.’

Jian Yi leans away, chastised. He turns to watch the professor intently, wears a look of composure as if he’s been drinking in every word with faultless understanding. Guan Shan’s lip curls, and his eyes span the room—and stop.

On the other side of the pagoda, He Tian is looking at him.

Laoshi He’s voice rings out, a deep baritone: _‘The key to resistance is to believe yourself impervious. You are above it. You don’t deserve it. It can’t reach you.’_

Guan Shan looks back at He Tian, wets his lips. He Tian doesn’t look away. Guan Shan scowls, and lifts the tip of his wand until it digs into his own throat, a slight dip of nausea beginning to swell. 

_‘It’s rude to stare,_ ’ he murmurs, the words seeping across the room and landing, only, in He Tian’s ears. For a moment, he thinks the spell didn’t work, that his comment has fallen on deaf ears. But then He Tian’s lips quirk. He shifts, glances at his brother, who continues the lecture, and Guan Shan spots the sharp end of He Tian’s wand appearing through the sleeve of his robes—and into his own neck.

 _‘I’ve been thinking,’_ comes He Tian’s voice, soft as the rustle of paper, soaked mistakenly in water and left to dry in the sun. Instinctively, Guan Shan presses a fingertip to the spot behind his ear; He Tian’s voice is an itch on the inside of his ear. It makes him straighten where he sits; it makes him shiver. _‘If you’re wasting so much time in the library, maybe I could tutor you.’_

Guan Shan _tsks_ under his breath, rolling his eyes. He replies, simply, ‘ _No, thanks, fucker.’_

He Tian muffles a grin behind his sleeve. _‘Suit yourself.’_

Guan Shan looks away, and feigns disinterest. He doesn’t look over again. After a minute, there’s a nudge. Guan Shan looks down at where Jian Yi has prodded him in his side, and meets his gaze. Jian Yi’s brows are furrowed with a question, brightly curious. Guan Shan’s face must be giving it away. 

‘It’s nothin’,’ he says quietly, and then: ‘Laoshi He’s brother thinks he can give me some after-school lessons or some shit.’

Jian Yi’s eyes go wide, dart between Guan Shan and He Tian, who is smiling placidly from the other side of the room, his back poised. 

‘What? Why? You should take it,’ Jian Yi urges. ‘He’s one of the smartest guys in school.’

‘I don’t give a shit how smart he is,’ Guan Shan replies quietly. ‘I don’t trust the guy.’ 

‘Aw, he’s not all bad. We’ve known him for seven years. He’s funny. Good at Quidditch. Teachers like him.’ Jian Yi pauses. ‘My father does, too.’

_Seven years._

Whether _Xiàozhǎng_ Jian likes him or not does nothing to put He Tian in Guan Shan’s favour; if anything, he distrusts him more. He says with some bitterness, ‘None of that means I’d know what he wants from me.’

Jian Yi’s response comes weighted and cautious: ‘Can’t be any worse than what She Li wants, can it?’

***

She Li grabs him by the sleeve of his robe at the end of the lesson before he can head to his next. He pulls him into a shadowed alcove in the foyer of the pavilion before Guan Shan can take a step on the boardwalk, where students see them facing one another but say nothing. Guan Shan doesn’t fight it; he’s used to the motion, the push-pull of She Li putting him in his place and expecting him to follow. He squares his jaw, steadies himself, stares She Li straight in the face.

‘What?’

She Li’s expression is displeased. ‘I told you to stay away from He Tian.’ 

‘I haven’t—’

‘You think I didn’t see your little exchange in Defence? Right under his brother’s nose?’

Guan Shan clenches his teeth together. The potion has worn off fully now; it makes him ornery, makes his skin feel like it’s bruised all over and wondering, with each come-down: _Was it worth it?_

In the foyer is the scent of cherry blossoms in full bloom, wafting in through the doors of the pagoda, and already the petals have begun to litter the walkways with their yearly offerings. The smell makes Guan Shan feel sick; it makes him want for his mother, and their small, Muggle apartment in the city, where the smell wafts up through their open balcony doors sixty feet up and coats the apartment in spring. 

‘It was nothin’,’ he tells She Li. ‘He Tian was just…’

‘Dropping little messages in your ear?’ 

Irritation flashes, and Guan Shan, feeling bold and bitter in equal measure, takes a step forward. They’re almost even in height, and She Li doesn’t yield. He lets Guan Shan crowd in close, lets their faces almost touch. She Li’s gaze is flat, goading in itself. 

‘I thought,’ Guan Shan says lowly, ‘that he wasn’t a threat?’

She Li’s eyes go heavy-lidded. ‘That doesn’t mean you go prodding him with a stick, hm?’ He doesn’t let Guan Shan reply, only presses on: ‘Tonight. I have another job for you. Check under your rice bowl at dinner.’

There’s a moment’s pause, and She Li catches the hesitation like a bloodhound picking up the first scent of the kill. Guan Shan regrets it instantly. He curls his fist, lets what’s left of his nails dig half-moons into his palms.

Slowly, She Li says, ‘Is that going to be a problem, Mo Guan Shan?’

 _Yeah, it’s a problem,_ Guan Shan wants to say. He wants to say: _I’m tired. I’m getting sick of this. I don’t wanna be your fucking errand boy. My grades can’t take it._ He thinks of what Jian Yi had said during class, dragging his hind legs behind him like a dog worn down by age and cancer, finding some dark space to let himself die alone. He won’t be that. He can’t.

Guan Shan has never turned down a job. More appropriately: he hasn’t dared. He’s tired, antsy, but it doesn’t mean he’s going to start now. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I’ll do it.’

She Li nods slowly, watches him. ‘Good,’ he says eventually. ‘Now skitter along.’

***

**11pm. Item: Two sachets of Red. Deposit: Page 32 of _Asiatic Anti-venoms: Part IV: Sichuan and Yunnan._**

At this time of night, the walkways are empty again. The night is familiarly dark; the wooden walkways that traverse water and land are shielded by a copse of wooden lattice and _clematis_ (which, tonight, unlike the last few, are now orange). At the junctures, where decorative wooden fencing panels meet the floorboards of the walkways, there are small, carved-out holes for any water to off-run during the monsoons, soaking the fields and letting the ponds and lakes across the grounds swell to fullness. 

Familiars and other creatures that inhabit Fenghuang use the gaps often during the dry seasons, clabberts and kneazles and puffskeins weaving across the floorboards undetected if the mood takes them or the walkways are overrun with students’ feet, and sometimes, late at night and with a particular sense of urgency and purpose, skitters a small fox.

It can feel for the vibrations of footsteps along the planks a hundred metres off, can dart across the expanse of an open field thick with asters and anemone that close up against the darkness of night and its waning moon. It can scrabble up the steep steps of the Grand Library pagoda, through the room dedicated to wood-block printing, the cordoned-off section for huge tomes of imperial edicts and memorials and forbidden magiks, and finally to the section allocated to healing and mediwizards, where glossy, richly stocked shelves tower high to the ceiling.

Also, it can deposit two small, coin-sized envelopes in the crack between a book on province-specific anti-venoms, and take its leave.

***

It’s past midnight when Guan Shan heads back to the Qilin dormitory; he doesn’t shift back tonight, not now that he knows He Tian could be patrolling the walkways, and he doesn’t have the energy to participate in a snide exchange of wit and—something else that Guan Shan can’t name.

He keeps to the fields, skirting the edge of the walkways that bridge across the tall grass on wooden beams that seem to rise so high when he’s in this form. The grass rustles while he moves, a mountain breeze unsettling pollen and loose petals with a sound like the shuffle of a deck of cards, and then—silence. 

Guan Shan, sensing its heaviness, pauses. His nose twitches. His tail bristles, body lowers itself to the ground. The night, both deserted by and swollen with noise, is holding its breath.

 _Something,_ the fox whispers. _There is something._

Guan Shan listens to it. He always listens to it. It senses things he can’t, a signal fire from earsnoseeyesmouth that leaves the rest of him, human and logical, to rationalise. But tonight there’s little reason: all he can think about is the dark streak that followed him the night before, a prowling, lightless blur. Last night, there’d been nothing, his own fear chasing him like a shadow.

But now the fox in him hears it, too. Senses it. It _knows_.

Guan Shan flattens his belly against the ground. Time acts strangely in this form, operates by only light and dark, by the presence of other creatures—those he can eat, those he can’t, and those that can eat him. Around him, there is nothing, not even the hoot of an owl or caw of a nightjar, and fear sours his breath, a strange fluid in his lungs. There is nothing, because there is something.

It’s black; its body is five times his size. There is muscle, and dark fur, and an amber gaze. It breathes, slowly, silently, and stares.

It’s standing over him.

Guan Shan chitters, a keening, high-pitched sound of alarm—and he runs.

There’s nothing else for it—he can’t fight it. He runs, knows that whether he’s a fox or a man, he can’t outrun it. How long he’s running—grass shredding through his fur, teeth glistening with spit, breath sharp and desperate—is lost on him. 

In one moment, he’s fleeing, and in the next—

The weight of the paw on his back is crushing. He goes, face-first into the ground, incisors rattling in his skull, feet scrabbling beneath him. Desperation. A last ditch attempt, entirely futile. A heart-attack—he’s going to die in this form because the animal in him won’t take it. There’s no time to transform back—There’s no point—The panther will have its jaws around his neck any second now, its breath already breathing down hotly onto him and— 

The weight disappears. 

In a second, it’s vanished. It’s nothing. 

Guan Shan draws in a shuddering, hacking breath, and can’t bring himself to move. He’s a plaything. If he moves, he’ll be prey again; he’ll be dead—He’s _already_ dead.

The panther is sitting a few metres away. Its tail is wrapped around its feet. It licks its muzzle, the dart of a long pink tongue, teeth the size of rocks. They could crush Guan Shan’s skull like chalk, bone and brain matter imploding onto the wooden beams, onto the petals of the aster. Instead, it sits there. Watches him. 

_Run, run, run,_ the fox is saying.

But sense is failing him. The panther has the look of a beast that, if Guan Shan were to run, it wouldn’t bother to catch him. As if ignoring its instincts. Guan Shan, an unregistered Animagus, has learnt how to do that. 

Guan Shan lifts himself from the ground. The panther’s amber gaze is steady, and it sits there still; it watches him.

Watches him stand to his full, tiny height. Watches his tail bristle, hears the fearful chitter that slips from his mouth. Watches him leave, run away, and does nothing. Guan Shan looks back only once to confirm this: that the black panther that had been watching him last night, and watches him now, does nothing. 

Later, Guan Shan will swear that it watched him with a smile.

***

‘You’re late.’

‘I made the drop. Does it matter?’

She Li tilts his head. ‘Talking back,’ he remarks blandly. ‘Did something happen?’

Guan Shan’s eyes shift. Can She Li see the sweat at his temples? The dampness through his robes? The adrenaline seeps through the shift, stays with him long after his bones stretch and his body takes its proper shape. The senses, animal and keen, stay with him longer. He never liked it—always tried to shift before he left the library so that he didn’t stare into the cave and think _run._ So he didn’t have to listen to She Li’s voice and think the same.

‘I’m tired,’ Guan Shan says. ‘I’ve been runnin’ this for two weeks straight.’

She Li shrugs. ‘There are mock NEWT exams next week—the students are antsy. Demand is high. You know what it’s like to need; your little blue bottles aren’t cheap.’

‘Wouldn’t need them if I wasn’t doin’ this.’

She Li narrows his eyes. _Still talking back._ ‘He Tian,’ he says. ‘Did you see him again?’

‘I kept low.’

‘Ah.’ She Li leans back slightly, appraising. With understanding: ‘There’s still an animal in you.’ His yellow-eyed gaze is sharp—intense and wanting. Guan Shan knows that She Li keeps him so close in part because he cannot be what Guan Shan is. He never made the transition to become an Animagus—can’t, mentally, make the jump. The empathy for someone else—some _thing_ else—isn’t in him. Guan Shan fears him for it—and pities him, too. 

She Li comes closer. ‘What can you hear? What can you smell?’

Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘It’s not clear. It’s all… distorted.’

_‘Tell me anyway.’_

Guan Shan swallows hard, then rolls his shoulders. He breathes out through his mouth. ‘It’s the cave,’ he says. ‘I can hear water drippin’ inside. Bugs. Mice. Somethin’—’ He glances at She Li’s face, enraptured and staring. ‘Maybe the Xiangliu. There’s somethin’ slidin’. Sounds like paper on paper. Like pages turnin’.’

‘Like skin.’

Guan Shan nods, slowly. ‘Maybe,’ he says. 

She Li’s gaze has moved from his own, shifts now beyond the shimmering entrance of the cavern, as if something in there calls to him. Something that turns his blood cold, makes him still. He isn’t a Parselmouth, in the same way he isn’t an Animagus, but Guan Shan knows he’d kill for it.

‘Can you see inside?’ She Li asks quietly, half to himself. ‘Can you see it?’

‘Not far enough. It’s too deep. It’s—My smell and hearin’ are better than sight.’

A quiet sound, like disappointment. He’s tried _Lumos_ , tried sending a ball of light down into the cavern, but it only goes so far, snuffs out a hundred metres in like a finger pinched around a wick. She Li draws himself away. ‘I can manage the weekend’s orders,’ he says. He reaches out, draws a fingernail along Guan Shan’s jawline, sharp but not deep enough to cut. ‘Get some rest—you look tired.’

Guan Shan should take it; should run with the opportunity for a few extra hours of sleep over the next few days and be fucking _grateful._ Instead, he squares his jaw, tries not to show his revulsion at She Li’s touch. 

‘I’m good,’ he says. ‘I can do one tomorrow, if you want.’

She Li’s gaze snaps. He tilts his head and slides his hands into the pockets of his dark trousers. ‘You’re offering?’ he asks, and then: ‘I thought you needed the study time. I saw your grades.’

Guan Shan grimaces, and thinks, _If I go tomorrow, it might be there again. It was like me._

He thinks, too, that if She Li cared an ounce about his grades or his scholarly aptitude, he wouldn’t ride his ass so hard. There’s grim irony in it: he needs Guan Shan for his _business_ , but he won’t ease if Guan Shan can’t keep up. But then, it hasn’t always been this bad. 

In the end, Guan Shan says nothing but, ‘I could do with the money.’

It makes sense. She Li’s eyes are still watchful, still lingering on a truth untold, but it’s easy for him to accept that Guan Shan’s needs and motives are simple. That it all comes down to something empirical—that money means more than the promise of a decent future. ‘Alright then,’ says She Li. ‘’Til tomorrow, little fox.’

***

‘Do snakes play with their food?’

A minute ticks by. Almost two. No response. Around him, the rest of the boys lie in their beds, snuffling in their sleep. A cool breeze flits through an open window; outside, glowbugs drift brightly around the roofs of the pagodas, fog shifting and dissipating around the tiered gold and red eaves before the break of dawn, and the birds are starting to waken, birdsong light and cautious. It’s almost 5am.

‘Hey,’ Guan Shan mutters. He reaches out, shakes the bare, pale shoulder uncovered by its sheet. ‘Hey, I asked you a question.’

With a groan, Jian Yi rolls over. ‘Unless you’re Zhan Zhengxi on Polyjuice and you’ve come to whisk me away for a night of wild, passionate fucking—’

_‘I’m not—’_

‘Then get off my bed, Mo Guan Shan, and go the _fuck_ to sleep.’

Guan Shan presses on. ‘It’s important,’ he says quietly. ‘What you said about She Li—’

Jian Yi grumbles, huffs, sits upright. His blond hair sticks about at odd angles, and his bright eyes are dull and blotchy with interrupted sleep. He glances at the clock on his bedside, at the pitch black sky through the windows, and swipes a hand across his face. _Too pretty for this,_ Guan Shan hears him mutter. He smells of his face cream, waxy on his skin: lemons and something cloyingly sweet.

‘What about She Li, Mo?’ Jian Yi asks wearily. He stifles a yawn. ‘Is the bastard haunting your dreams now?’ Then his gaze sharpens, grows curious. ‘Do you have dreams like you’re—’ A quick, furtive glance. ‘— _you know._ D’you wake up drooling over rabbits?’

‘Shut up,’ Guan Shan snaps. ‘This isn’t about me.’

‘Right, right,’ Jian Yi sighs. ‘She Li. Snakes. Food. I mean…’ He scratches his head, looks despondent for a moment, and then: ‘No. They’re not like that, as far as the textbooks say. They focus on basilisks and the Xiangliu, but they’re all, y’know, _Serpentes._ When it comes down to it—adder or basilisk—food isn’t a game.’

‘They wouldn’t let their prey go? For a chase?’

‘Like a cat? Not really. It’s not in their nature. They’ll wait for you to pass by and then—’ He shoots a hand out, snaps his fingers around Guan Shan’s chin, and squeezes. ‘ _Smoosh_.’

Guan Shan slaps his hand away. ‘But somethin’ like… Like a leopard. A panther. What about that?’

Jian Yi casts him an odd look, then humours him. ‘They’ll play, sure. But if they let you go and leave you alive, they’d have to be pretty sure where their next meal is going to come from.’ He shrugs. ‘Or decide you’re not worth the effort.’

Guan Shan is silent for a few minutes. The panther wasn’t She Li; it isn't in his nature, and Animagi become only what they already are. She Li could be nothing but a snake; he pretended to play a game, an act of impulse, but his actions were as calculated as an Arithmancy equation—nothing unplanned for, prey caught when it was close, left to suffocate in the lining of its throat. There were always answers. 

Not that Guan Shan has given any serious thought to it. She Li still longs to be something he can’t. 

‘Is that it?’ Jian Yi asks him, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eyes, which are a little bloodshot. His hands drop limply to his lap. ‘Are we done with the Care of Magical Creatures recap? Are we done here? It’s a fucking Saturday and—Have you even _slept?’_

Guan Shan gets up from Jian Yi’s bed, wanders over to his own, and starts to kick off his boots. ‘Not yet,’ he mutters. ‘Soon.’

Jian Yi shakes his head at him, throws himself back down onto his pillows, and smacks his lips. He yawns wide, a string of spit laced between molar and incisors, and rolls over, his back to Guan Shan. 

‘G’night, Red,’ he bids over his shoulder. ‘Enjoy the rabbits.’

***

The panther greets him that night.

Guan Shan sleeps long enough that he misses breakfast and lunch, and he wakes hungry and still tired. His fingers curl around the blue bottle in his drawer, fingers curved loosely around the glass, and then he puts it back. Not today. Today, he doesn’t mind the tiredness—there are no lessons for which he has to force himself into focus. He has a few scrolls of essays to write for Charms, another for Laoshi He’s Defence Against the Dark Arts class, but these he writes with a pot of tannin-rich tea and an hour-long nap in between. 

He finishes at sunset, the clouds flossy, moon already bright, and eats with Jian Yi and Zhan Zhengxi in the dining hall before the drop, filling his stomach with rice and soup and chicken and pork ribs made dark and salty with _douchi_. They waste time watching the stars prick their way into the velvet sheet of night sky, backs laid back on a grassy slope outside the main pagoda, where the Fireball is perched atop the highest eave, its face ducked beneath its wing. 

He stays there until the air grows cold, and Jian Yi and Zhengxi wander off in the hopes of finding an empty dorm room, a broom closet, a particularly shadowed alcove. Their fingertips touch just slightly as they walk. At 10pm, a Prefect strikes the suspended gong from the main pagoda, and the sound of their curfew reverberates across the grounds, ruffling the grass like a sudden gust of wind. Petals fall from the trees; the Pounding Peach Tree lets loose half-a-dozen or more pieces of fruit that will need a week still to ripen. Guan Shan shifts, unnoticed, and waits.

11.15pm. He’s made the drop, slips carefully through an opening in the boardwalk near the library, and stares. It’s been waiting for him. It’s sitting as it was last night: its tail wound around its huge paws, a penetrating amber gaze peering out through the darkness. Were it not for its eyes, Guan Shan might have missed it entirely. Him. The panther is male, and when Guan Shan makes a small, chittering sound, the beast _purrs_. 

_Run,_ the fox is saying, but the warning is quiet, aborted. _Run? Fightorflightorfight?_

Guan Shan shakes his head, and clears it. He moves cautiously, keeps his distance, and comes to a stop a few feet from the beast. Even here, Guan Shan has to incline his head to look up at him; even here, his shoulders shift, belly sinking to the ground, haunches ready to run at any moment. But the panther does nothing. It sits there—and inclines its head. 

Guan Shan stares until the panther gathers himself to his feet and stretches. His skin shudders with the motion, muscles bunching and unravelling. His tail flicks once, twice. Another incline—backwards, towards the fields, an open court. 

And then they play.

***

He lets Guan Shan win once or twice—a quick nip at his tail, a batting of a paw against his shoulder before he’s off again—but mostly, Guan Shan finds himself thudding to the ground with a resounding rattle of his skuttle, pinned beneath a paw, the white of his tail caught precariously between a powerful jaw. There’s no pain in it. A little bruising, a little roughness that is inescapable.

It takes a while for the sense to go numb: the fear morphing into a cautious sense of play, adrenaline bristling his coat. The air grows colder, and yet he’s warm. He has questions he can’t ask, can’t rationalise— _who, what, when?_ Is there someone beneath the beast’s body? There has to be. He’d be dead by now, neck snapped, throat ripped out, blood dousing the fur around the panther’s muzzle, panting through the spurt of Guan Shan’s arteries while Guan Shan’s fur becomes pale skin, and his human body is left ruined and torn for someone to spot from the walkways in the morning.

But it doesn’t happen; they chase, instead, for hours. The panther can leap across the smaller ponds, can propel itself with a thudding agility across burrows and open patches of field. He goes crashing into a sunken bog at one point, a miscalculated jump resulting in a gleeful shaking of its ears, droplets flying, and Guan Shan swears he’s laughing. 

Guan Shan’s advantage: he’s small, well-hidden, can hide his quick breaths and bunch his limbs beneath him. The panther loses itself to the darkness, but Guan Shan can spot him most of the time: swallowing too much light, a dark shadow where there should be moonlight on water, or a thicket of cornflowers, soon to bloom.

There’s no sense of time. There’s the game, and then there’s the collapse: exhausted from the thrill, they collapse beneath the boughs of the Peach Tree, which, standing silent and without volatile objection, doesn’t seem to recognise the human in Guan Shan. The panther bats a peach away with its paw—the stench of it pungent and unappetising—sends it rolling down the hill the tree is set upon, and makes a quiet _harumph_ sound as it splashes into a pond below, startling a nest of flobberworms feasting on the reeds. 

The panther settles, lies down. He’s panting, and his body emits a heat that makes Guan Shan settle close. Cleaning a giant paw of grass seed and pollen and bog water, the panther glances at Guan Shan—who chirps, a cautious request—stares for a long moment, then looks away. Quietly, his tail wraps curls around, the tip of it coming to rest at Guan Shan’s feet.

 _Safe_ , the fox whispers. _Rest?_

Guan Shan looks at the tail, at the beast it belongs to—sated, worn out, content to let Guan Shan sit close, and supposes the panther is unlikely to eat him in his sleep. He’ll realise later that he’s forgotten about his Seventh-Year Qilin dormitory, his human bed, his human form. Here, tiredness pulls at his eyes, and he settles his chin on his paws, presses against the beast at his side—purring now, the vibrations loud, soothing—and lets himself sleep.

***

The daylight is soft on the backs of his eyelids. His bones ache with the pleasant burn of a long sleep after a longer day. Beneath him, damp leaves stick to his skin as he shifts. The ground is dewy with thawing frost, the sun rising brightly and soft over the edge of the mountainside so the whole ground glistens, and— 

Guan Shan blinks, looks down at himself. Skin, not fur. He’d shifted back in the night, left his clothes somewhere. 

_Shit,_ he thinks. He’s lucky it’s a Sunday: no lessons, students staying late in bed. He has options; he can summon his clothes, shift back to the fox and tread his way carefully to the Qilin dormitories. The grounds are mostly quiet—a chitter of birds, the drip of melting snow finally beginning to melt, the quiet breathing of something close at his side. 

Guan Shan goes still. Turning, a pair of dark eyes meets his own. 

‘Morning, sunshine.’

Guan Shan shouts, a strangled thing that gets lodged in his throat. He scrambles backwards in panic, but He Tian shoots a hand out and catches him on the arm, an iron grip around his bicep. 

‘Steady,’ He Tian coos, as if calming a bolting colt. He points a finger upwards, and mouths, _The tree._

His heart in his throat, Guan Shan tries to swallow it down. He feels sick. He Tian is still holding his arm, but gentler now, and Guan Shan realises with dreadful irony that he hadn’t minded it last night. Without words, or knowledge, or the understanding of who lay beneath the dark sheen of the panther’s fur, Guan Shan had let He Tian push him around as part of their game—and he’d enjoyed it. 

_‘You,’_ he spits, fear and anger rendering his voice hoarse. ‘You’re the Animagus.’

He Tian lets him go, and leans back on his hands. He’s naked and doesn’t mind it. Speckled shadows from the leaves above them dapple his skin; the rest glows warmly in the morning sunlight, marked with goosebumps. 

‘Sorry to be such a disappointment,’ He Tian says. ‘You didn’t seem to mind it last night.’ 

Guan Shan rears from the innuendo. He doesn’t feel sick anymore—he’s _going_ to be sick. Right here, in the sheltered cove they’d shared the night before, their bed of leaves and bracken, keeping one another warm. _Fuck._

He heaves, but nothing comes up. His breath is sour, and laboured. Suddenly, there’s no air, a vice grip around his throat. A roll of nausea snatches each breath away and he’s going to pass out.

‘Hey,’ He Tian says, getting to his knees. He crowds in close, takes Guan Shan by the shoulders. ‘Hey, I didn’t mean it.’ He’s a picture of concern, his mouth pressed into a flat line. He looks like his brother. Their _teacher_ , who’s going to find out and expel Guan Shan from the school so he’ll never practice magic again, memory wiped, never knowing what institution might sit on the peak of the Badaling Mountain. 

‘Who knows?’ Guan Shan demands. ‘Who—who _knows_ about me?’

He Tian pulls back, brow furrowed. ‘No one,’ he says. ‘Who should I have told?’

 _‘No one._ No one can fuckin’ know.’

He Tian says, ‘You know I’m not registered either, don’t you?’

‘There’s a fuckin’ _difference,’_ Guan Shan spits. He gets to his feet, doesn’t care that he’s exposed—that He Tian can see all of him. He’s shivering with the early morning cold, with the anger and fear that flashes white-hot through him. ‘Doesn’t matter if anyone knows about you,’ he says, quieter, seething. ‘You’re a Pureblood. I ain’t _shit.’_

He Tian stays there, kneeling. ‘That’s not true.’

‘Yeah? Because you know so fuckin’ much about me? _You don’t know me.’_

‘I’ve known you for seven years. I know enough.’ 

Guan Shan flinches. In a way, he’s right: they’ve watched each other from a distance, shift from boys to men. In a few months, they might never see one another again, and Guan Shan would’ve been happy with that. More than happy. But He Tian speaks as if there’s more—as if they’ve known each other longer, more intimately than Guan Shan’s realised: something quiet, unravelling and evolving right beneath his nose.

He shakes his head. He Tian is watching him, waiting, kneeling like a pennant. Guan Shan has nothing more to say. Words don’t come to him like they should, and his fists have no place here. There’s nothing else left. He shifts, feeling so naked with another watching him so openly, skin becoming bristling red fur, ground rising to meet him, and he runs. 

He doesn’t look back, knows it would be pointless. They’d established it already last night: If He Tian wanted the chase, Guan Shan would have been easily caught.

***

He feigns illness for a few days, a half-lie that only rings true with the headache that pounds at his temples, and the night sweats that keep him company while he tries and fails to sleep. He waits for a knock on the dormitory door, for _Xiàozhǎng_ Jian to put his head around the corner and deliver Guan Shan’s expulsion on a parchment with neatly written characters, ink still wet, a hard look in his eyes. It doesn’t come.

She Li’s notes do—delivered by owl, or manifesting themselves beneath Guan Shan’s pillow, fidgeting, the sharp corners giving Guan Shan paper cuts on his neck.

 _Still sick?_ he writes. _I’ll give you a potion. No charge._

 _that’s the problem,_ Guan Shan writes back. _too many potions & not enough sleep. i’ll be fine. give me a few days._

He senses She Li’s displeasure from his silence, but it’s easy to deal with when he doesn’t have to face it. Remarkably, the same goes for everything: school, She Li, the panther— _He Tian._ He knows that ignorance is bliss. Out of sight out of mind. He knows, too, that it doesn’t stay a blessing for long.

***

‘Why did you run?’

‘Don’t talk to me.’

‘You won’t reply to my notes, and you ignore me in class. I’ve got to—’

Guan Shan brushes him off, doesn’t falter when their shoulders collide.‘I told you not to fuckin’ _talk to me.’_

He Tian shouts out through the crowd of students between lessons: ‘I deserve an answer, don’t I!’

Along the wooden walkways, heads turn, stare at He Tian, who stands tall and visible against the rest of them, and then turn to Guan Shan, who stops short and glares openly. He makes an about-face and storms in four short strides in He Tian’s direction. 

He Tian goes willingly, his arm pulled along in the vice grip of Guan Shan’s hand, and he’s almost smiling as Guan Shan shoves him into an area where the walkway widens, opens up for a few benches either side. The Charms pagoda is connected to the main hall by a walkway that traverses a small lake, and the view from the seats is bucolic and placid. A lark skids across the surface, water rippling beneath a mid-afternoon sun. 

Soon enough, the walkways empty out, and Guan Shan sneers up at him. 

‘You don’t deserve shit,’ he tells him. ‘You messed with me.’

‘It’s been a week.’ He Tian clicks his tongue against his teeth. _Tsch._ ‘You sure know how to hold a misplaced grudge.’

 _‘Misplaced?’_ Guan Shan echoes hotly. He steps closer. ‘You could _end_ me, asshole. I know what people like you do when you’ve got dirt on someone.’

He Tian leans back. He presses a hand onto the wooden railing behind him, and turns his neck so he can stare out across the lake, eyes squinting against the sunlight. The temperature is supposed to drop tonight, the clouds set to gather thickly with snow that will cover the mountain and every spare surface of Fenghuang with mounds of white flurries.

‘ _Who knows,’_ He Tian murmurs. ‘That morning—that’s one of the first things you said.’

‘So?’ Guan Shan retorts. ‘What about it?’

He watches He Tian’s eyes slide back to his face, and then beyond. They harden. Turning, Guan Shan sees She Li moving past with the last handfuls of students heading late to their next lesson. She Li’s gaze is flat. Guan Shan feels as if he’s slipped into a tank of cold water, thick and viscous; his blood moves slowly through his veins. 

She Li’s seen everything. He nods at Guan Shan, once, doesn’t stop, and moves on. His silver head disappears somewhere along the walkway to the main pagoda. 

_‘Shit,’_ Guan Shan whispers. He hangs his head. Dread pools in his stomach.

‘That’s the kind of person you think I am,’ He Tian says, understanding. ‘You think I’ll use it against you. Like he does.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,’ Guan Shan mutters, but it’s futile. He Tian has understood the situation and the stakes far too well to believe Guan Shan now.

‘Comparing me to someone like him,’ He Tian continues. ‘I’m almost insulted—but I don’t blame you. My family and I have a reputation.’ He smiles. ‘You’re friends with Jian Yi, aren’t you?’

‘We’re in the same house. We share a dorm.’

‘So you’re friends,’ He Tian says, droll. ‘Fuck, was saying the word that hard? My point is—’

‘Yeah, fuckin’ get to it—’

‘That he knows. Jian Yi knows, doesn’t he? About you. He could be the most powerful tattletale in the school, but you’re not scared of him.’

‘I’m not scared of _you_.’ 

He Tian brushes him off, continues. ‘My pure heritage—whatever it counts for—pales in comparison to the Jian’s. And he stays quiet and doesn’t spill your secrets, because he isn’t like She Li. And neither am I. We’re not all the same, Guan Shan. You saw that last night.’ His smile is quiet, a little sad. ‘Don’t let your prejudice blind you.’

 _Prejudice_? Guan Shan thinks. _Is that even fucking possible? Does he even know what it’s like to be syste-fucking-matically judged and looked down on? For everyone to presume the worst of you?_

He says, ‘So what d’you want me to do? Why’d you even come to me?’ 

_And how long have you been watching me?_

‘Because I want to help you.’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. _‘You_ wanna help _me?_ With what? What the fuck for? _’_

‘A mutual enemy,’ he says. ‘A lesson in adversity. You’re not far from expulsion, and we both know how to ease that pressure. At this rate, you might actually graduate.’

‘You’re talkin’ about She Li.’

He Tian inclines his head, and stares Guan Shan straight in the eye. ‘I know he uses you for the powders. I know he won’t let you out of it. Did he force you to make the shift? How many years has it been of him pulling the strings and you—’

‘I can’t,’ Guan Shan says thickly. In his throat, panic has begun to flutter. The cool day has turned stifling, a thick shroud that suffocates him beneath his robes. ‘He’ll kill me. He’s already seen us—’

‘Good,’ says He Tian. ‘Let him. I have a plan, and whether he’s watching or not doesn’t matter.’

Guan Shan swallows. ‘You won’t win against him,’ he says. ‘You’re good but he’s—’

‘A snake? Trust me, I know. We share a dorm and I’ve slept with one eye open for seven years. But you…’ He steps forward, and there are inches between them. The smell of him is frustratingly familiar. One night, voiceless and seeing him anew in the skin of a creature unknown, and Guan Shan already knows the scent of him. ‘Can you?’ He Tian asks him. ‘Can you trust me?’

 _Fuck,_ Guan Shan thinks. He Tian or She Li. Is this as good as it gets? The panther or the snake. Someone who’d slit his throat if he could crawl into Guan Shan’s skin—or someone who’s seen him. All of him. And still puts out a hand.

 _No,_ Guan Shan thinks. _It’s not trust._

But it’s something. 

It’s impulsive. It’s no good. There’s only one word for it: ‘Yeah.’

He Tian nods, steps back. He knows it isn’t unconditional, but the bright glimmer in his dark eyes says he doesn’t need it. Above them, the blue sky has started to fade, clouded over by a thick expanse of white that is almost too bright to look at. They’re late for their next lesson; there’s little point in going now, and He Tian peers around them, cursory, and says quietly: ‘If we’re going to do this, you need to listen to me very carefully.’

***

On Friday evening, the note catches Guan Shan in the back of his neck on his way to dinner, a folded paper plane charmed to strike him just at the juncture of his spine with a pinch like a bee sting. 

_Meet me at the cave tomorrow night,_ it reads. _We need to talk._

He passes the note to He Tian that night as they shift back, some time around midnight, the note creased with obsessive foldings and unfoldings that have left the paper with a slight sheen, and He Tian meets his eyes. He reaches an arm out, lets his hand fall on Guan Shan’s shoulder. His palm is warm. Snow fell, as the skies promised, followed by three days of unseasonably warm weather that has left pools of melted ice and snow pocketed around the grounds that soaked their fur while they played. 

Beneath the Pounding Peach Tree, He Tian’s dark hair is still wet, beads of water dripping onto the paper and spoiling the ink while he bows his head to read; Guan Shan is still shivering as he dresses. Nearly a week has passed, and Guan Shan has lost fear in his own nakedness, only protecting himself now from the cold. He rubs at his eyes, stinging from pollen-thickened air.

‘It’ll be fine,’ He Tian tells him, haphazardly dressing in a dark Henley shirt and tugging on a down jacket. ‘Everything’s in its place.’ He balls the paper in his fist, tosses it aside. The motion stirs the tree, and a branch smacks down to the ground with a great thud where the paper lies. Peaches fall free from their hold, a few smashed to bursting beneath the weight. Peach juice splatters onto Guan Shan’s face.

He glowers, juice dripping from the tip of his nose, loose strands of his hair. He Tian is laughing. In the gloam of the moonlight, Guan Shan can see his eyes gleam.

‘I hate you,’ Guan Shan says, reaching for his wand to evaporate the mess.

Before he can: with an overt familiarity, He Tian leans across and swipes a bead of peach juice from Guan Shan’s skin with a finger, and pops it in his mouth. 

‘A shame,’ He Tian merely says, after a minute of stunned silence turning to anger. ‘You taste so delicious.’

***

The weather stays warm, a blue-skied day that evolves into a clear-skied night, stars like specks of dust catching the light. The moon, curved as a cuticle, as the glinting edge of a penny piece, watches them over the stone awning of the cave. Guan Shan pulls his robes tighter around himself.

For five minutes, She Li has said nothing. 

And then: ‘You should have listened to me, Mo Guan Shan.’

Guan Shan swallows, wishes he had some of that Liquid Luck he’d read about—or a few shots of firewhisky. He has his cards in order; he grips his wind tightly in his pocket. ‘I’ve had to listen to you for seven years,’ he says. ‘Think I’ve done my time.’

She Li’s face twists, mouth pointed with disgust. ‘You have no idea what you’re doing with He Tian.’

‘It’s none of your fuckin’ business what I do with him. You don’t control that.’

A pause, heavy like the air in the cave—a weight on Guan Shan’s throat. _That._ Whatever _that_ is, exactly, She Li seems to have figured it out. 

‘A week? Two?’ She Li asks, almost incredulous. ‘That’s quick work. Especially for you—’

Guan Shan cuts him short. ‘What does it fuckin’ _matter?’_ he demands. ‘Who I talk to—who I spend time with—who I _fuck_ —the hell does it _matter_ to you? Are you just fuckin’ _jealous_?’

 _Get angry if you can,_ He Tian had said. 

_If I can?_ Guan Shan thinks now. When it comes to She Li, he’s always angry: always on the cusp of spitting hellfire and fury in his face. She Li has made him feel fear for so long that he’s forgotten that it tastes no different on his tongue. 

‘It matters,’ She Li says steadily, ‘because I _own_ you, Mo Guan Shan. You traded out your life when I saved it. Have some dignity and respect that.’

Guan Shan almost laughs. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Not anymore.’

She Li narrows his eyes. ‘No?’

‘No. _No_. I’ve done what you wanted. I’ve done what you asked for. I’m done. I’m out.’

Steely: ‘You don’t make that call, little fox.’

‘What are you gonna do about it, then?’ Guan Shan sneers.

He expects it when She Li pulls out his wand and points the tip of it between Guan Shan’s eyes. The muzzle of a gun, Guan Shan might have feared. The blade of a knife, too. Those were Muggle things. Guan Shan knew how to fear them; he’d grown up around them and was hurled, each summer, back into its sordid orbit. But here, Guan Shan had his own wand, his own defences. This is a language he knows. 

‘If you were gonna kill me,’ Guan Shan says, ‘you would’ve done it.’

‘I haven’t decided,’ She Li replies simply, ‘whether you’ve outgrown your use. Whether it would be better to kill you or let you live the rest of your miserable life down there among the rabble. You always were destined for nothingness.’

‘Must be frustratin’,’ Guan Shan replies, shrugging off the insult. ‘Knowing I’m friends with Jian Yi. With He Tian. They’re not nothin’, are they? Bet you’re wonderin’ what they see in me.’ 

_Sometimes I do, too._

‘They’re something,’ She Li allows. ‘But even their families are known for lapses in judgment. I’m sure they’ll even themselves out after school. Learn their place. Learn yours.’

‘You’re an asshole.’

‘And I’ve made up my mind.’ He flicks his wand, and Guan Shan’s is pulled from his pocket with a wrench that he can’t control, a silent _Expelliarmus_ that forces Guan Shan’s wand flying into the air—and onto the floor of the cavern. They look down at it. Guan Shan jerks forward, but before he can reach it, She Li kicks it, and the wood rolls away from the both of them, skittering across the stone, and through to the cave. The boundary shimmers, settles.

Guan Shan stares at it. ‘My wand,’ he whispers, hand outstretched, fingers almost touching the boundary. 

She Li drops his own and kicks it across the stone floor. It catches on loose gravel and dirt, spins wildly, then rattles and knocks, somewhere in the cavern, against Guan Shan’s. The two of them: wandless.

Guan Shan turns his gaze on She Li, anguished. ‘What the _fuck_ have you—’

The fist catches him on the underside of the jaw. Guan Shan reels backwards, shouting against the burst of pain. He steadies himself, then presses a hand to his jaw, gaping. She Li’s eyes are hard. Guan Shan stares at his mouth, curved and cruel. At his side, She Li’s fist clenches, unclenches.

‘Let’s do it your way,’ She Li says. ‘Come on. Put up your guard. _Hit me._ ’

Guan Shan shakes his head. His jaw throbs. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go; this wasn’t part of the plan. If it comes down to this—if it comes down to Guan Shan trying to force She Li into incapacitation through sheer _pain,_ then Guan Shan won’t win. She Li won’t feel it. He’ll keep swinging until his hands are broken—and keep going. 

_I’m not gonna stand a chance,_ he thinks, dread pooling in his stomach. 

‘Fine,’ She Li says. ‘Your loss.’

He comes forward—fast, and Guan Shan’s too slow, still reeling. His elbow comes up in an awkward block, but he’s left open. She Li strikes him again, knuckles bruising on Guan Shan’s cheek bone. With the burst of pain, of bone threatening to fracture, Guan Shan thinks only that She Li smells like hot blood and something stinging like bleach.

 _‘Stop!’_ he cries. ‘I’m not—’

‘Not what?’ She Li demands. Another hit, an open-palm smack across that catches Guan Shan at the temple, snaps his head back. ‘That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A fight? One final expression of freedom? You thought you could _win?’_

Guan Shan stumbles back. Behind him, the barrier sounds like it’s singing. ‘Just call it quits,’ he begs. ‘If this is all ‘cause you just wanna hurt me—fine. You win. You’ve hurt me—’

‘No.’ She Li stalks forward. ‘I don’t want to hurt you anymore, little fox—I’m going to ruin you. It’ll be a shame. You got out but you never got far, hm? If you just can’t _listen,_ then you’re no good to anyone.’

Another hit, the heel of his palm catching Guan Shan in the chest. His breath leaves him, a vacuum that leaves him gasping and clutching at his robes. He bites down on his tongue, swallows coppery blood. And then it happens: the final blow, a fist drawn back, ready to strike, and She Li’s fist swings into Guan Shan’s waiting hand. 

A moment, beneath the moonlight, where neither of them do anything. She Li almost looks shocked, almost looks pleased. Then Guan Shan spits blood onto the floor, tightens his grip around She Li’s fist, and _pulls_.

She Li’s eyes go wide. They stumble backwards, straight into the cave. The barrier swallows them, a feeling like falling into lukewarm water, the temperature of skin, like a womb—and then it plummets. A sudden chill cuts Guan Shan to the bone. He can see his breath just barely, white plumes before his face. He can see She Li’s, and the sheen of his eyes, impossibly wide. 

‘We’re inside,’ She Li whispers, staring about himself. His gaze swings to Guan Shan, then away. ‘How are we past the barrier?’

But Guan Shan doesn’t reply. Slowly, he picks up his wand from where it lies beneath his shoe. Next, and he doesn’t know why, he toes She Li’s across the space between them. She Li doesn’t hesitate: he reaches down to swipe it from the floor—and stops. 

Guan Shan has his wand raised, pulse jumping in his throat. Behind him, a panther creeps from the shadows, and lopes quietly to his side. Its tail flicks side to side. The silent revelation dawns: it has been watching, waiting. 

She Li’s eyes dart: Guan Shan, the wand, the panther. And then he starts to laugh. 

Guan Shan stares at him.

 _‘This?’_ She Li says, chortling. ‘This was your grand plan? You think I’m afraid of a _cat?’_ He lurches in He Tian’s direction. His wand is pointed. His voice, unwavering: _‘Crucio!’_

‘No!’ Guan Shan cries. 

Too late.

The panther crashes to the ground, its huge body writhing. It makes a mewling sound, limbs twitching, and Guan Shan goes to his knees. The sound escaping from its mouth is like nothing Guan Shan’s ever heard, high-pitched and agonised. Guan Shan puts his hand on the panther’s flank, holds it still until the trembling stops. An amber eye rolls in its skull, and then meets Guan Shan’s gaze. The panther goes still, panting, its ribcage heaving. Seconds tick by, and then the panther lurches to its feet, glances once at Guan Shan, once into the dark depths of the cave—and runs. 

It doesn’t go to She Li, jaw wide, claws extended, threatening death and a ripped-out throat. Instead, it runs _away,_ tail between its legs. Guan Shan watches it flee through the barrier of the cave, a dark shadow running towards the school. It leaves him alone again, kneeling on the floor, freezing to the touch, littered with gravel and small fractured bones. Guan Shan’s heart makes a single, plangent thud, and he slowly gets to his feet. 

Behind him, She Li is laughing. 

‘What a fucking disappointment,’ he’s saying. His words echo off the walls, the cold humour ricocheting in Guan Shan’s eardrums, a taunt that chases up his spine. ‘Weak,’ She Li spits. He wipes a hand across his mouth. ‘The He’s always run when the tide turns.’

But He Tian doesn’t run from the pain. There is no weakness there. He Tian runs because there’s something coming from the darkness, something no human could hear. A slow, steady slither, gaining pace. Bones and rock crushed beneath its weight. The sibilant hiss of nine mouths working to taste the chemicals in the air: human fear, human blood.

It’s cold here, so cold. They hear it at the same time. She Li’s features spasm with fear and elation. The Xiangliu, coming right for them.

***

It’s a blur, what happens next. There are eyes coming from the darkness, and teeth, and a body that fills the cave and reflects fractured light from a panel of scales—green, black and blue like a bruise. A smell like a leaking gas pipe—like tulips, festered and left to rot, water gone putrid. 

And then there is something tugging at Guan Shan’s clothing, a panther pulling him away with its teeth, the shudder as he transcends the barrier. He goes with it, stumbling down from the cavern and towards the school, where the pagodas are lit up like overturned braziers, dark coals and pockets of ash, still hot. 

He shifts mindlessly, skin surrendering to fur, and looks back: beyond the barrier, which shimmers like oil, he can see the pale outline of She Li’s dwarfed beneath the shadow of the beast.

***

‘We should help him.’

‘He tried to kill you. He would’ve done it—gladly. He would’ve _laughed_ while that thing ate you whole.’

‘We should still help him.’

He Tian sighs. ‘Typical Qilin,’ he says. ‘Always thought you seemed weirdly placed in that house—too angry to be kind. Now I’m starting to get it. You’re kind because you’re angry.’

‘You’re romanticisin’ me.’

‘Maybe,’ He Tian murmurs. He draws Guan Shan close to his side; their skin is bared unselfconsciously to the moon and each other. A hand sits on Guan Shan’s hip. The touch seems natural, a comfort Guan Shan wishes he’s had for some time—dislikes it only for this reason. At their backs, a gingko tree bows over them, the leaves thick with green seeds, which will turn saffron yellow in autumn. ‘There’s no point in helping,’ He Tian says with a sigh. Grim with displeasure, he adds: ‘He’ll be scared, but he won’t be hurt—much. I made you a promise.’

Guan Shan stares up towards the rocky path that leads to the cavern. ‘He’s an eighteen-year-old, like me.’

‘He’s an eighteen-year-old _man_ who uses his condition of not feeling things physically as an excuse to turn himself off emotionally. He’s worthless.’

There’s no arguing with him. Guan Shan loses the will to try. He asks, ‘Are you gonna tell me now? How you got us through the barrier? The thing with the Xiangliu.’

He Tian glances at him. ‘You don’t want the illusion?’ He wiggles his fingers. _‘Magic.’_

Grumbling: ‘He Tian—’

‘Alright, alright. How else do you think I could’ve done it?’ 

‘I dunno.’

He Tian smiles. For a silent moment, he pulls away, and lowers himself to the ground, unbothered by the bracken and the coolness of damp earth on his skin. Guan Shan, reluctant, joins him, and protests only mildly (pure impulse) when He Tian places a heavy arm back around his shoulders, keeping him close. 

The sun will be rising soon, the balmy evening giving way to a clear-skied day, the grounds everywhere tenderly green and blooming with new life and the chorus of birdsong, an evening sun dressing everything in gold and casting the place in softly elongated shadows. Guan Shan feels, for the first time in a while, content to see the coming of a new day. He’s still tired, and thinks of resting his head on He Tian’s shoulder. After a moment, he does.

Eventually He Tian says, ‘Coming from a privileged Pureblood has its uses, you know.’

It isn’t an answer. ‘But _how_ —’

‘My brother lifted the barriers, just for a few hours. It was never really there. It only looked like it—felt like it.’

Guan Shan stares at him. A few hours, and the beast could’ve run through the grounds, gobbling up half the student body and terrorising the rest. Two thousand years ago, without the warded caves and a Parseltongue to speak with the Xiangliu, the school had been in a constant state of half-ruin, half-disordered repair. 

‘Does the principal know?’ Guan Shan demands.

‘Probably.’ He Tian smirks. ‘He hates the She’s as much as we do. He was probably watching the whole thing and laughing.’

‘And the Xiangliu? How’d you stop it from killin’ She Li?’ _How’d you know it wouln’t kill me?_

‘Professor Qiu’s the resident Parseltongue,’ He Tian replies simply. ‘He promised to bring it a feast. That’ll be my task, probably. Hunting down a fattened goat and dragging it up to the cave some night. My family doesn’t give anything for free—not even to their own blood.’ 

He slides his gaze to Guan Shan, who says, ‘You didn’t save me, y’know. I wasn’t some fuckin’ damsel in distress.’

‘I didn’t say you were—or that I did. Maybe you’ll get a moment to work on passing your NEWTs. And catch your breath.’ Hesitantly, he admits, ‘I’m not even sure if this will be enough. It’ll scare him, but enough? He’s a dark guy.’

‘It’s a warnin’ for next time,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Next time I won’t be forgivin’. Might forget my—my moral compass or whatever.’

‘You won’t,’ He Tian says with confident ease. He turns his face, lets his lips brush against Guan Shan’s temple, and breathes in deeply. He hums, a sound of pleasure. ‘But you don’t need to worry about that. I’ve got one weak enough for the both of us.’

‘You still helped me.’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian says, then, with the hand slung around Guan Shan’s shoulder, draws Guan Shan’s mouth around to his with the concerted effort of a fingertip placed beneath his chin. He leans in. ‘But I’m not a fucking Qilin. Doing this?’ he asks. ‘Purely, utterly selfish.’

**Author's Note:**

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